A REFUTATION OF FALSE CLAIMS AND DISTORTIONS BY KORFF REGARDING THE TALMUD OF JMMANUEL

James W. Deardorff
Research Professor Emeritus
Oregon State University
December, 1996
Updated September 2000, and April 2008

In his book, Spaceships of the Pleiades: The Billy Meier Story (Prometheus Press, 1995), Kal K. Korff makes masses of claims against the reality of Eduard Meier's contact experiences. Thus the reader who is unfamiliar with the research by Wendelle Stevens, Lee & Brit Elders, Thomas Welch, Jim Dilettoso and Gary Kinder on the Meier case, and unfamiliar with Korff's background, may mistakenly think Korff's claims are valid simply due to their sheer number. Since it requires several times the space to clearly refute a false or misleading claim as it does to make it, I can present a refutation of only one section of Korff's book here, short of writing a book of my own. This involves the document called The Talmud of Jmmanuel (TJ).

The Talmud of Jmmanuel: Introduction. In his book, Korff spends 6 or 7 pages trying to debunk the TJ, which was discovered by a Greek-Orthodox ex-priest and Meier near Jerusalem in 1963 in the form of ancient Aramaic scrolls encased in resin. The existent TJ appears from my own analysis to be a translation of this original Aramaic writing from which the Gospel of Matthew was derived. The TJ is extremely heretical for Christianity, however, indicating that Jmmanuel, alias Jesus, survived the crucifixion and later traveled and taught much in Anatolia and on eastward to northern India and the Kashmir region. Hence it is easy to understand the intense motivation some persons would have to discredit it and Meier at any cost. I've chosen this topic to sample in detail, without skipping any ostensibly relevant charges made by Korff on it, since my own book, Celestial Teachings (CT), investigates the same document. CT explores the matter in depth and finds some 200 reasons why the TJ was the source for the Gospel of Matthew rather than being any hoax based upon that gospel. Both the TJ and CT are available from Wild Flower Press, P.O. Box 190, Mill Spring, NC 28756; telephone: (800) 366-0264. Since writing that book, I have found additional, valid criticisms and questions directed against the Gospel of Matthew by New Testament scholars; bringing the total to over 600 verses of Matthew receiving such criticism from which the TJ does not suffer. Yet the TJ contains parallel verses to over half of these Matthean verses. This means that when the writer of Matthew heavily altered the TJ to remove its heresies and replace them with his own theology, he made many errors, inconsistencies, contradictions and awkward editorial manipulations, and many of these have been detected by scholars. These are set forth in detail in my Mt-TJ website files.

On p. 36 Korff says that "Billy Meier himself wrote a book titled the Talmud Immanuel which was released in the United States by Wild Flower Press." This is not correct, however, since Meier was its co-discoverer, custodian of the translations and editor, not its author. Further, the TJ's correct spelling is "Talmud of Jmmanuel," where the reason "Immanuel" is spelled beginning with a "J" and not an "I" is explained by Meier in the TJ's introductory pages. It may be surprising to learn how strong a case can be made that Jesus' name had originally been Immanuel before he was renamed by Paulsee Celestial Teachings, pp. 29-31, 87-89.

On the same page Korff says that I became "a believer and enthusiastic supporter of Meier's messianic claims." I would like to correct any misimpression this may give that I support Meier as being, or trying to be, any sort of savior figure or deliverera messiah of that sort. If he is in any sense an "anointed one," it is by virtue of having been singled out by certain extraterrestrials (ETs) as being their particular or primary contactee, and considered by them to be a present-day prophet. But this is what the evidence shows; the primary investigators of his ET experiences in the late 1970s and early to mid-1980s (Wendelle Stevens, ....) could see no way that his main UFO photographs and ET experiences, supported by many witnesses, could have been hoaxed. Their research has been open-minded, intensive and forthright, in contrast, as we shall see, with that of Korff.

Part of the mission Meier has taken on for himself, at the request of his contacting aliens, is to disseminate the TJ, or the true teachings of Jmmanuel, to interested persons. In so doing, however, Meier has gone out of his way to avoid becoming a leader of a large cult, in actively discouraging persons outside of his small group of supporters at Schmidrüti, Switzerland, from promoting his story in any grandiose manner or even through public seminars. And he has long discouraged visitors to Schmidrüti from meeting him. He may be contrasted, for example, with an alleged contactee named Raël (see his The Message Given to Me by Extra-Terrestrials; see Bibliography), who has actively recruited a following of several tens of thousands despite any supportive evidence.

It should be mentioned that if the ETs who contacted Meier had instead chosen a different person and allowed him some 18 different occasions to take rolls of daytime color photographs of their craft, that different person, provided he were to go public, would evoke the same desperate attempts by persons like Korff to discredit him as have been directed against Meier.

Judas Iscariot. Taking Korff's claims, charges and innuendo against the TJ in order of occurrence, we start with the topic of Judas Iscariot. The TJ was allegedly written by that disciple, and in the TJ one learns that a different person, Juda Ihariot, son of a prominent Pharisee, was the one who pointed Jmmanuel out to the arresting party and soon afterwards suffered remorse and committed suicide. On pp. 78-79 of his book, Korff confuses the issue in an interview with Bernadette Brand, Meier inner-group member, by not distinguishing the two names. Because the two names sounded much alike, a chief priest, according to the TJ, was able to initiate a persisting rumor that it was Judas, not Juda, who had betrayed Jmmanuel and then committed suicide, thereby succeeding in casting doubt on Jmmanuel's teachings if one of his own disciples could not accept them, while sparing Juda's Pharisaic father of embarrassment. We don't know if Korff quoted Brand correctly when she allegedly said, "No. This is another Judas Iscariot" in response to Korff's question of whether the TJ's author was the same Judas Iscariot who the Gospels say betrayed Jesus. She might instead have said, "No; this is another, Juda Ihariot." We don't know if Korff could discern the difference between the two names if she had mentioned Juda Ihariot, or whether Brand herself for expedience did equate the two names in replying to Korff. What we do know is that Korff did not bother to state in his book the different name of the betrayer given within the TJ, and instead left the issue in a needlessly confused state for the unknowing reader.

Interestingly, the TJ's matter-of-fact presentation of Judas Iscariot as the designated writer among the twelve, and a different person as betrayerJuda, an acquaintance of Jmmanuel and the disciplessolves some five problems concerning Judas Iscariot, ranging from major to minor, that New Testament scholars have had to grapple with in the past century. (See my book, The Problems of New Testament Gospel Origins, chapter 6. Or see my website file on the TJ's author.) The similarity of the two names made it easy for the rumor to be spread that it had been Judas, not Juda, who betrayed the man and soon afterwards committed suicide.

Some obvious errors of Korff. On p. 78 Korff says that the TJ "can be obtained in the form of another book called Celestial Teachings: The Talmud Immanuel by Dr. James Deardorff." This is incorrect on two counts: (a) My book contains various verses and passages extracted from the TJ, but does not begin to set the whole TJ into print; and (b) the subtitle of CT is quite different from what Korff stated.

On p. 78 Korff states that Jmmanuel was a Pleiadian, whereas the TJ indicates that it was Jmmanuel's father who was a Pleiadian, his mother being (earthling) Mary. Although this error is corrected in a following sentence, where it is his father who is mentioned as being the Pleiadian, Korff immediately incurs a second error by naming Jmmanuel's father as Plejos rather than as Gabriel. Instead, according to what Meier learned, Plejos was a Pleiadian leader who prepared the overall plans for Jmmanuel to be procreated. Later in the same sentence, however, Korff then corrects "Plejos" to "Gabriel." It is evident that Korff had not read the TJ; if he had, he would have had no excuse for having become so confused.

It may be mentioned that a decade or so after Meier's Pleiadian contacts commenced he was told by the "Pleiadians" that (a) they are not really from the Pleiades but are only from that direction from here in our galaxy, some 80 light years beyond the Pleiades, and (b) this is in a region whose dimensions are slightly "shifted" in time. Earlier, Meier had been told only (b). They told him they could now be called "Plejarens."

An irrelevancy. On pp. 78-79 Korff expounds on why the Feb. 3rd date that Jmmanual was born on, according to what Meier was told during one of his contact experiences, and the Feb. 3rd date of Meier's own birth, represents an irrelevant agreement. If this is so irrelevant, why then did Korff spend a paragraph speaking of it?

Rashid's translation work done in Baghdad? On p. 79 Korff perpetuates an apparent error of Randolph Winters' book The Pleiadian Mission, though a minor error, in stating that Rashid did his translating of the TJ from Aramaic into German while living in Baghdad. Instead, the TJ's attachments imply that the ex-priest continued to live in Jerusalem while secretly working on the TJ translation until around 1970, by which time he had transferred the bulk of the translations then completed to Meier. By 1970 Meier had returned to Switzerland to raise his young family, and did not hear from Rashid again until 1974. In the meantime, Rashid's translation project in Jerusalem had been discovered by authorities, causing him to flee with the papyrus rolls, and members of his family, to a refugee camp in Lebanon. Only after they were flushed out of the camp by an Israeli aerial bombardment in 1974, which destroyed the writings, did Rashid flee to Baghdad, where, however, he was assassinated in 1976, according to what Meier was told by Semjase, his primary Pleiadian contactor, in 1976, as conveyed in Meier's Contact Reports.

Were there no TJ scrolls? On p. 79 Korff states that "what ...people who espouse the Talmud Immanuel as being real ignore is the fact that there are no original scrolls." However, this is not true, because the fact that the original writings were lost or destroyed in 1974 and are no longer available is made clear in the letter-copy attachment at the end of the TJ, also in Meier's Contact Reports, and has certainly been emphasized by myself and Randy Winters in our writings and talks. This is the primary reason New Testament scholars typically supply as to why they cannot be made interested in the TJthere are no originals of which they could check the Aramaic writing and send out to labs for radiocarbon dating analyses. And so this is an important reason why the TJ has not come to the attention of the general public. But all clues point to there indeed having been a set of original TJ papyrus rolls before their destruction.

How ancient is the best Bible? Next on p. 79 Korff implies that the Bible is backed up by original, ancient texts and thus has a preferred status over the TJ, which has just the German, and later English, translations to show for itself. However, the earliest complete texts of the New Testament gospels do not date earlier than the 4th century, and only scattered fragments to the 2nd century. Moreover, patriarchal evidence indicates that the Gospel of Matthew had been the first gospel written, and written in Hebrew or Aramaic. This text never survived. All we have received, centuries later, are Greek transcriptions of earlier transcriptions that did not survive. Further, according to this patriarchal evidence, which the TJ supports, the earliest Gospel written in Greek (Mark) was itself a translation (and abbreviation) of Matthew, with the Gospels of Luke and John being still further removed. Korff needs to be informed that an original to the New Testament does not exist, and that the earliest New Testament that does exist is several centuries and many transcriptions removed from its source.

The TJ, on the other hand, is in much better shape than the New Testament, having experienced only one translation leading to its 1978 version, which is still available for scholarly study from Meier in Switzerland. Later Meier gave the TJ an editorial update to correct errors and incorporate some unrevealed "code" at the behest of his ET contactors, which led to the 1992 German-English version of the TJ published by Wild Flower Press. The two versions agree in their essential content. Recently a 1996 edition of the TJ became available, in which numerous errors in the previous English translation have been corrected.

Were the TJ scrolls conveniently lost? In the same paragraph, Korff states that the scrolls "have never been found," and then goes on to complain that they were "conveniently lost" by Rashid. All this is a self-contradicting denial that avoids mention of the available information. This information indicates that Rashid and other members of his family who had fled with him, while hiding out in a refugee camp in Lebanon, had to again flee for their lives after a large section of the camp was burned down, according to Rashid's letter, by the Israeli military. They barely managed to escape, but Rashid had no time to retrieve the writings from their hiding place to take them with him. So it cannot be said that Rashid simply "lost" the scrolls, especially if he was correct in stating that the particular Israeli raid in question was conducted for the express purpose of eliminating himself and the papyrus rolls rather than as punitive action against Palestinian guerillas.

Thus, Korff does not begin to divulge what the story is that underlies the TJ's discovery, translation and loss or destruction. At the time Rashid wrote Meier to tell him about this in September of 1974, he didn't know if the TJ rolls had burned up in the fires raging in the refugee camp, or had been recovered by Israelis. Later, Meier was told by his Pleiadian contactors (in Contact Report #7) that the rolls had been destroyed in the conflagration. This loss was in no way a "convenience," not even to Rashid's security, as he was nevertheless assassinated two years later, from what Meier learned from Semjase, because of his having been the TJ's translator and a witness to the reality of the original writings. Thus Korff's cavalier dismissal of all this represents a total distortion. Consistent with the barbarous treatment Rashid received, one may learn that Meier himself has lived through some 13 assassination attempts since 1975.

A newspaper search reveals the most probable Israeli raid responsible for the destruction of the TJ rolls, in my opinion, to have been among the series of June 18-20, 1974, in which several refugee camps in southern Lebanon were severely bombed. This was ostensibly in retaliation for a guerrilla incursion from Lebanon into northern Israel on June 13th in which three Israelis and all four guerrillas involved died. The raids on June 18th are most suspect, since they occurred first when there was the greatest element of surprise. Palestinians interviewed in Beruit had not expected the raids to last as long as three days (New York Times, June 21, 1974, p. 2), and the response does seem too highly escalated, too extensive and too long delayed (5-7 days) to have been just a retaliation for the June 13th guerrilla raid in which the guerrillas responsible had already been killed or died on the spot. Over 70 civilians were killed and another 70 wounded in these raids.

The Washington Post of June 24th, 1974, stated, "Contrary to published speculation, the highest officials of the U.S. government were both astonished and outraged by the overkill of Israel's revenge last week against Palestinian bases, endangering fragile peace hopes for the Mideast."

A senator who spoke out against the irrational brutality of the raids was Sen. Abourezk of S. Dakota. In the Congressional Record of June 21, Vol. 120, No. 91, he stated, "I am extremely saddened to note that the government of Israel has seen fit to conduct daily bombing raids on civilians in southern Lebanon, in the farming areas, and, indeed, in the refugee camps where the military communiques which emanate from Israel say that the bombing raids are designed to kill suspected terrorists." This report is not at all inconsistent with Rashid's statement that "Then the Israelis announced that they had undertaken a punitive action against Palestinian guerillas. However, in reality, they, together with some people from the Christian church, were after me and my scrolls."

Moreover, the Israeli Information Minister, Aharon Yariv, himself offered the explanation, which would ordinarily be politically embarrassing, that they had purposely delayed their retaliatory response partly on account of President Nixon's visit to the Mideast during June 10-18 (New York Times, June 19th & 20th). If Rashid was correct, however, along with the present analysis, the Israeli intelligence on Rashid's whereabouts became available only towards the end of Nixon's Mideast trip. Thus the attack to destroy the Talmud of Jmmanuel scrolls could be conveniently ascribed to a delayed retaliation for the June 13th guerrilla incursion, and the political embarrassment for the "delay" could be gladly accepted so that the real, sinister purpose behind these particular raids could remain hidden. The political embarrassment in mind here is an admission that Israel timed its raids so as to minimize any discomfiture to the visiting president of the U.S.their key ally and advocate for financial support. Yariv was a former Israeli chief of intelligence.

Thus if certain high Israeli officials had learned that Rashid had fled to a coastal refugee camp with the scrolls, they may have taken this opportunity to eliminate their problem, while explaining it to be a new policy of vigorous pre-emptive strikes against Palestinian guerrilla organizations (New York Times, June 21, p. 1). The raids may have been prolonged for the full three days to allow many refugee camps to be attacked, so that no explanation would be needed as to why one particular campthe one where Rashid's presence may have been determinedwas bombarded. Or, possibly, Israeli intelligence may not have known for sure which one of several refugee camps Rashid had been heading for or seen at, and so many camps were attacked. These raids took place less than three weeks after Yitzhak Rabin replaced Golda Meir as prime minister of Israel and Shimon Peres succeeded Moshe Dayan as minister of defense.

Another possibility for the raid in question might seem to be the earlier Israeli bombardment of seven refugee camps on May 16-17. However, this date is still further removed from the September date of Rashid's letter, and Israel's swift retaliation had come within one day of the provocation, as was customary. This provocation consisted of guerrillas holding 90 young Israeli students hostage for a day at Maalot, Israel, with eight of them plus eight adults being killed by the guerrillas before they in turn were killed. So in this case the retaliation, being prompt and not uncharacteristically escalatory of Israel, rules out this possibility.

There are no other candidate raids on refugee camps between Aug. 9th and Sept. 14th, the date when Rashid posted his letter from Baghdad. So in summary, it is consistent with Rashid's letter that within three months prior to posting it there had been at least one series of Israeli raids (June 18-20th) that could have caused the destruction of the TJ scrolls and for which the official explanation for the raid is not at all convincing. It cannot be over­emphasized how serious a threat the TJ was for Christianity and also for Judaism when still in the form of original Aramaic scrolls which could prove their own authenticity, and how likely it was for leaked knowledge of its existence to have provoked a violent, immoral reaction in expectation that the desired ends would justify the means.

Why is the TJ heretical for Judaism as well as Christianity? One reason it is heretical for Judaism is that in it Jmmanuel teaches that the Jewish God (Yahweh or El) was not the true Creator God (the Great Spirit or "the Creation"), but was an advanced human or humanoid whom we would nowadays identify as an ET alien. This of course opens the door for interpretation of angels as aliens, sky chariots & pillars of cloud or fire as UFOs, and similar identification of other elements of Old Testament Merkabah mysticisma scenario unacceptable to mainstream Judaism and blasphemous to it, but a well known possibility ever since the books of von Daniken have come out.

Another reason is that in the TJ, Jmmanuel expresses the opinion that Israel should not be considered a chosen race, and that the land of Israel was acquired from others through abominable, unjust wars.

A third reason consists of Jmmanuel's teachings on reincarnation and karma, which concepts are just as repugnant to mainstream Judaism as they are to formal Christianity (and Islam as well).

A fourth reason that could well have most influenced an Israeli political leader such as Rabin, for example, is that if analysis of the TJ's Aramaic writing and radiocarbon dating of its scrolls were to be allowed that would prove its genuineness, the TJ's contents would call into question the veracity of the Bible, especially the New Testament, and undermine Americans' belief in Israel as the Holy Land, thus leading to eventual loss of U.S. support for Israel.

Reasons for maintaining highest governmental secrecy about the true purpose behind the raid in question of course entail the foregoing reasons, which bear upon the very justification for Israel's existence. Also, no government officials would wish any of their more barbaric actions to be known to their people or to other members of the government. Hence such actions had to be covered up at all costs.

Is the TJ worth nothing without the originals? On p. 80 Korff claims that the existence of the translated TJ is "evidence of nothing" without the original scrolls. However, one may analyze the translations, study how overwhelmingly improbable it is that they could be any hoax, and therefore find it extremely plausible that the TJ's originals indeed once existed. What Korff should have said is that, if the burden of proof is upon Meier to show beyond any doubt that the TJ is genuine, then without possessing the original scrolls he is unable to do so to most scholars' satisfaction.

The TJ's uniqueness. On p. 80 Korff states that the TJ "is not unique as a document." This is false, since anyone who reads the TJ will immediately note its many unique narrations, as well as its unique yet natural solutions to scores and scores of New Testament Gospel problems, both major and minor, many of which have befuddled New Testament scholars for centuries, and others of which are brought to light for the first time by the TJ's text. Simply because the TJ supports the numerous traditions indicating that Jesus survived the crucifixion does not at all mean that it does not exhibit unique features throughout. Its narration on how Jmmanuel survived the crucifixion, for example, is unique among the 10 or so scenarios various independent scholars of the past three centuries have proposed to explain Jesus' appearances in the flesh to his disciples after his crucifixion and entombment (see my book, Jesus in India, International Scholars Publications, 1994, chapter 6).

Did Jesus hide in India? On p. 80 Korff claims the TJ says that after Jesus reached India "he remained in hiding." Korff gives Randy Winter's book as the reference. (Of course, the TJ never refers to the man in question as Jesus, but rather Jmmanuel.) However, Winters says no such thing, but indicates what Meier had learned from Rashid's browsing of the end section of the TJ scrolls: Jmmanuel had continued with his teachings even in northern India and the Kashmir area, as well as having married and raised a family there.

Kersten's book Jesus Lived in India. Also on p. 80 Korff mentions the book Jesus Lived in India by German author and investigator, Holger Kersten, and exclaims, "In truth, Meier had even read Kersten's book!" Here Korff is strongly implying that Kersten's investigations and rendering of the Jesus-in-India traditions gave Meier the idea of hoaxing this theme into the TJ. What Korff failed to mention, however, is that Kersten's book first came out (in German) only in 1983, whereas the TJ first appeared in print in 1978. Thus if Meier read Kersten's book it was years after the TJ was published. This is an example of a flagrantly false innuendo by Korff. On the other hand, the traditions of "Jesus" surviving the crucifixion and eventually traveling east to India and the Kashmir area data back for centuries.

The anonymous Swiss scholar, Ted Auerbach. On pp. 80-81 Korff states that the "typewritten translations" by Rashid received by Meier were analyzed by several unnamed scholars in Germany and Switzerland, and that they "decided not to publish their results." Korff did not name the source of the letter that disclosed this piece of information, noting that this source wished to remain anonymous because the conclusions were negative. However, the points that Korff goes on to mention are the very same as those which Prof. Ted Auerbach of Gebenstorf, Switzerland, has discussed with me in correspondence (Auerbach ltrs. of Feb. 5, 1988; April 16, 1988; Sept. 29, 1988; Feb. 2, 1989 and March 31, 1989). In a letter of May 7, 1996, he sent me a copy of his June 23, 1980, summary report, which is what Korff quotes from in his book, and openly wrote me about its background. So there is no need now to keep Auerbach's name under wraps. The international director of MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) has confirmed that Auerbach is indeed the "Swiss scientist" referred to by Korff (Walt Andrus, telephone conversation of April 19, 1996). Auerbach is or was one of MUFON's overseas consultants, and was Andrus's key advisor in Switzerland regarding the Meier case. Thus Korff obtained the information he terms "confidential" (p. 107, footnote 54) from Andrus, and Andrus from Auerbach.

However, Auerbach actually did wish to have his summary report published. He had sent it to both Dr. J. Allen Hynek and to Andrus for possible publication by one or the other, though neither did publish it.

On pp. 80-82 Korff leads the reader to believe that the Swiss scientist (Auerbach) was a part of a group who together studied Meier's evidence and claims. This is not the case, however, and Auerbach's conclusions from his summary report, the bulk of which are stated verbatim on Korff's pp. 81-83, represent his own individual views.

Auerbach's favorable remarks. Perhaps Korff wished to keep Auerbach's name anonymous because the end of his summary report, not reproduced by Korff, mentions a piece of information favorable to Meier's credibility: One morning Meier had been driven with some members of his group to a wooded area where they witnessed a UFO light rising from behind the woods and disappearing over their heads. (This appears to have been the sighting of 16 June, 1975, by Hans Jacob and six others.) Several more documented UFO sightings connected with Meier's contacts, as witnessed by a total of eight members of Meier's group, are presented in Stevens's UFO Contact from the Pleiades: Preliminary Investigation Report (pp. 127-143). These are reported in more detail by Stevens than is the event by Auerbach.

In his letters to me Auerbach has likewise indicated that he has noted realism in Meier's contacts. In his letter of Feb. 2, 1989, Auerbach wrote: "A member of our UFO club gave me G. Kinder's 'Light Years', and I finished reading it a few days ago. The book convinced me that I had done some injustice to Meier. This goes to show that one should not judge a person until all the information is at hand. I always thought that Meier's photos still were likely to be fakes. However, according to the book this is impossible. There may be some false ones among them, but the great majority of them, amounting to several hundred pictures, must be genuine. Also, I did not realize that he has had more than 100 meetings with Semjase." Korff had omitted much material like this from his anonymous source's report.

Until 1988, Auerbach's knowledge of the Meier case came only from materials loaned to him by Hans Jacob, an early member of Meier's group of supporters who soon defected. (Jacob is mentioned frequently in Korff's book.) Auerbach, who never bothered to meet Meier, kept Jacob's materials for a month or two, took notes, and then returned the materials to Jacob, who had asked Auerbach to advise him whether or not to remain a member of Meier's group. He evidently advised him in the negative.

Is the TJ the New Testament verbatim? On p. 82 Korff includes a portion of the summary report (by Auerbach) that states, "The Talmud turns out to be the New Testament verbatim, but with a large number of additions without much ethical value." This first part is not correct, as it is only the Gospel of Matthew that exhibits many parallel passages to the TJ, not the whole New Testament; and even about half of these passages, or more precisely, verses, are only poorly or moderately correlated with TJ verses (see Celestial Teachings, pp. 227-232, 271-290).

As to the second half of the above quote, the task of Auerbach's study should have been not just to see if a case could be made that the "additions" were inserted by a hoaxer, or even by Meier himself, but also to see if an even stronger case could not be made for the opposite: that the compiler of the Gospel of Matthew had had the TJ in front of him and omitted much from it, especially everything heretical at the time, when writing his gospel. Celestial Teachings and my website consider both angles, but indicate overwhelmingly that the latter is the case. They, moreover, analyze the additions made to the TJ text by the compiler of Matthew and show how those additions have been preferentially pointed out by various New Testament scholars, who had no knowledge of the TJ, as indeed being redactions or editorial additions, with still other redactions within Matthew having been overlooked by them but made apparent by the TJ text. There is no way that Meier's limited education could have prepared him to be a literary hoaxer excelling over any known Gospel scholars, or could have allowed him to attract an unknown scholar of unsurpassed ability to create a literary hoax at all comparable to the TJ. However, Auerbach was proceeding on the assumption that the TJ had to be a hoax, and so did not consider this most important aspect of the problem. Korff in turn was apparently happy to accept and display Auerbach's negative conclusions without investigating them for himself.

The TJ's new materialethical or not? As to the TJ's "additions" not being of much ethical value, one should first notice that the compiler of Matthew had already accepted everything from the TJ's narrations (up to the time of Jmmanuel's entombment) that he found to be acceptable or ethical by early Christian standards, and thus ethical by today's Christian standards. These include some genuine TJ verses concerning the Golden Rule and the advice to notice the log in your own eye before criticizing the speck in your brother's eye. Therefore, that which the compiler excluded from Matthew, which appeared in the TJ, would almost by definition not pertain to ethical matters as seen in a Christian context. However, Jmmanuel's teachings about the human spirit and karma do have a strong ethical content apparently overlooked by Auerbach, since these teachings emphasize taking responsibility for one's actions and learning from one's mistakes. These teachings could not have been included by the compiler of Matthew. Instead, the only "spirit" he wished to emphasize was the external "Holy Spirit," whose prominence traces back to Paul. And mistakes were to be categorized as sins, from which the sinner had to be "saved" if he were to make it to heaven. Hence these teachings of Jmmanuel did not get retained and show up in Matthew.

Another of Jmmanuel's ethical teachings omitted by the compiler of Matthew, and overlooked by Auerbach, is the great guilt incurred by committing suicide. Since the TJ's explanation for this involves the setback to the evolution of a human spirit that suicide causes, the compiler of Matthew omitted this also. He may have omitted it additionally because the Christian tradition of Jesus dying on the cross means that his actions, if inexorably leading to a crucifixion at which he died, were tantamount to suicide. One wonders if the prevalence of suicide in the Western world would be so great as it is today if the New Testament had contained explicit teachings against suicide.

Other ethical teachings in the TJ, not in the Gospels, include the admonition to obey the natural law of Creation (true God). Thus the TJ does contain a goodly number of teachings of ethical value beyond those that managed to find their way into the Gospel of Matthew.

How could the Gospel of Matthew show strong resemblance to the TJ? In this same portion of Auerbach's summary report it is stated (Korff, p. 82), "It is hard to see how the New Testament can agree word for word with the originalapart from the added passagesif the latter [the original] lay buried all the time." Again I point out that the agreement is usually much less than perfect, and this agreement is not with the New Testament as a whole but with substantial portions of Matthew. Only about 17% of Matthew's verses are very highly correlated with verses within the 1978 TJ (Celestial Teachings, p. 232). Even this degree of correlation can probably be attributed largely to the fact that Rashid, as an ex-priest, in translating the TJ into German must have had the German Bible in front of him as a guide in choosing optimal words in those TJ verses that closely resembled parallel verses in the German Bible. In addition, there are large chunks of TJ material not present at all in Matthew.

To move on to the last part of Auerbach's statement above, the same question restated is: "How could the Gospel of Matthew agree with substantial portions of the TJ if the latter lay buried until 1963?" It is not at all difficult to understand how the TJ likely came to be utilized by the writer of Matthew. One need only infer that Judas Iscariot, during the 40 years or so of his later life in India, had time to transcribe the TJ scrolls as well as continue to add to them, thus making an additional set. According to what Meier learned from Rashid, after Jmmanuel's death in the early 2nd century the TJ was carried back to Palestine by Jmmanuel's elder son, Joseph, and his precious cargo would have included the transcribed copy of the TJ. (Alternatively, this Joseph may have made a transcription of the first portions of the TJ during his two-year trek from India to Palestine.) Once in the Palestinian region he no doubt released the transcription to some seemingly capable and honest person who knew of some of the true traditions concerning what Jmmanuel had taught, but eventually this transcription found its way into the hands of the compiler of Matthew in an unknown early church, perhaps the church in Antioch. The TJ's original papyrus rolls, however, Joseph had wrapped in animal skin, encased it all in resin, and buried the packet in the tombsite near Jerusalem where it was discovered some 19 centuries later. There is no shortage of possibilities of this nature on which one can only speculate, but which Auerbach either could not imagine or chose to ignore. In his letter to me of March 11, 1988, Auerbach mentioned that this whole question had "struck him" right from the beginning; it seems that his failure to have seen plausible solutions to it was a prime cause for his proceeding on the assumption that the TJ must be a hoax.

The TJ and its editor's writing style. The same portion of Auerbach's report claims, "both the additions and the letter of the priest are written in Mr. Meier's characteristic style, containing all the errors in German also found in the Semjase manuscript." Only two suggested examples of such errors are given further into the report, and they are the two Auerbach has discussed with me in correspondence. One of these is "doch aber" (yet however), which occurs once in Rashid's letter to Meier and ten times in the TJ. However, hundreds of thousands of "doch aber" expressions may be found using an Internet search (with no comma separating the two words). There is no good reason why Rashid wouldn't have used the expression at least once, whether or not he knew it was an expression Meier may have commonly used in their conversations together (they had known each other for several years). However, with Meier being the editor of the TJ and having gone over it before first publishing it in 1978, some of the ten occurrences in the TJ may have been through his editing of Rashid's translation. No one has gone over the Contact Reports to check for the number of occurrences of "doch aber" there, and in relation to some standard expected number per thousand words. However, here again the exercise would be fruitless in trying to prove Meier's guilt or innocence, since all the Contact Reports were transmitted telepathically through Meier's head, and so would perforce end up in a form most understandable to him.

The other example from Auerbach is "so" when its meaning, according to Auerbach, was "so that." However, Rashid's letter doesn't contain "so" in any sense that means "so that." The TJ does in some 38 places; however, in most of these places it could mean the English "so" (without "that") just as well, as in TJ 15:2 -- "Many people gathered around him, so that he stepped into a boat and sat down, and all the people stood on the shore." And the first definition for the German "so" is the English "so." But again, if Auerbach was correct on that point, it would only be consistent with Meier being the TJ's editor and the transmitter of the Contact Reports from Semjase (and other Plejarens), which reports incidentally contain Meier's end of the conversations as well. More on this below.

In his letter to me of 29 Sept. 1988, Auerbach mentions that the expression "Es ist mir leid" ("I am sorry") was one of Meier's favorite expressions and occurs at the start of Rashid's letter to Meier (implying that Meier wrote it). However, Rashid's letter actually starts with "Es ist mir sehr leid" ("sehr" = "very"), and this must have been what Auerbach meant to write. Without the "sehr," this is a very common German expression. With it, it is indeed rather rare, but the circumstance Rashid was describing, of the most precious scrolls or papyrus rolls having been destroyed, could indeed call for "very" to be added. Auerbach did not disclose in what writing(s) of Meier he had frequently seen the expression "Es ist mir sehr leid." (Usually, "I am very sorry" is expressed as, "Es tut mir sehr leid.")

The so-called "additional" TJ material, having no parallel in the Gospels, would have required the most editing by Meier because its content would have been strange for both Rashid and for the typist Meier employed in 1976-1977 (Frau Krauer); thus they could not have relied upon the German Bible for examples of wording. Meier, however, had been educated in many ways by his earlier contacts with ETs named Sfath and Asket, and so was prepared for the TJ's non-biblical revelations. Within his editing, some of Meier's characteristic writing style would be expected to show through, including his use of Swiss-German. There should be no surprise that an editor's writing style will show through sections of text that he edits, and Meier probably felt that Rashid's rendering of German in places left something to be desired. Such an imprint from Meier should then exhibit some positive correlation with Meier's writing style within his Contact Reports, since the latter were all channeled through his mind as he set them into typewriting.

Were Meier's Contact Notes and Rashid's letter typed on the same typewriter? This same portion of Auerbach's summary report claims that "comparison shows the letter alleged to have been written by the priest in Iraq actually to have been typed on the same typewriter as the Semjase manuscript" (Korff, p. 82. In this and preceding paragraphs where I quote Korff, the italics within quotes stem from Korff.)

The "Semjase manuscript" refers to Meier's Contact Reports, in which Semjase was the primary ET spokesperson. To check out Auerbach's claim, I have obtained the first four pages each of copies of the German version of the Notes of Contacts 2, 61, 76 and 150, dated Feb. 3, 1975; July 29, 1976; May 23, 1977 and Oct. 19, 1978, respectively. These I have compared against the Rashid letter-copy in the rear of the TJ, using its 1978 version.

What Auerbach noticed is that both Rashid's letter and the Contact Reports (up until about 1978) were typed on typewriters having the same kind of Swiss-German typeface, which doesn't use the German double-ess symbol. (In October of 1978 he switched to a different typewriter with a much different typeface.) This identity of typeface represents an astute observation on the part of Auerbach. However from there he apparently assumed without further checking that the same typewriter was involved in both cases. Simple examination, however, reveals at least four particular distinguishing peculiarities between the two typewriters:

(a) With the typewriter used by Rashid, the top of the "9" lies slightly too low, as seen in 2 out of 2 occurrences. In the three German Contact Reports, on the other hand, it lies at the proper height in all 10 instances available to me for inspection.

(b) With the typewriter used by Meier, the lower-case "w" tends to fall too lowboth its base and its top; see Fig. 1.

Judging from the position of its base relative to the average baseline of neighboring letters, in 61 out of the 89 occurrences in the three sets of Contact Reports on hand the w's base was positioned 8% or more too low; in 27 more of these 89 it also fell too low to a lesser extent (within an estimated uncertainty of 2%).

In Rashid's typography, on the other hand, the position of the base of the "w" agrees with that of the baseline within a small uncertainty of estimation in 31 of 34 occurrences; it lies detectably below the baseline on only 3 of the 34 occurrences. See Fig. 2.

This distinction is quite noticeable, and indicates that two different typewriters were involved.

(c) In 3 out of 7 times where "ur" appears in the Rashid letter, the two letters lie so close together that their bases touch or merge; see Fig. 2, lowest line (arrow), for an example. This does not occur in either of the two Contact Notes I examined that Meier typed, nor in the one typed by his assistant (Contact Report #2), in all of which I counted 75 occurrences of "ur" properly spaced. A reason for this to have occurred in Rashid's letter and not in Meier's typing is that the "u" typically gets struck by the right index finger and the "r" by the left, so that inexact coordination can cause the two keys to strike too closely together in succession at times. This is much less likely to have happened to someone typing with only one hand.

(d) In the typescript of the Rashid letter the left side of its "ü" is very weak 12 out of 12 times (see Fig. 2, 3rd line in German, for an example), and also the lower-left side of its "ä" 7 out of 8 times. These imperfections do not appear in the Contact Reports.

After noting these differences, I obtained a report from a forensic document examiner and typewriter expert, Dr. Philip Bouffard of Mentor, Ohio. Among a few additional differences he noted is that the "F" falls noticeably too low in the Rashid letter (this occurs 13 times out of 13 occurrences); see Fig. 3 below.

On the other hand, out of the 27 occurrences of "F" in the Contact Reports I possess, the problem never occurs. This also strongly suggests that two different typewriters were involved.

In summary, the charge that the same typewriter was used in typing both the Contact Reports and Rashid's letter does not hold up under close scrutiny. One does not need to be a typewriter expert, or to examine originals of the documents, to notice the differences I have discussed indicating that two different typewriters were involved. After I pointed out these differences in a letter to Auerbach, he replied on 12 July 1996 that, "You have done some real detective work on Rashid's letter. It really does seem to have been typed on a different machine from that of the Contact Notes, although the differences are very subtle." They don't seem so subtle, however, once they have been pointed out.

One may also include in the comparison a typed copy of a letter of agreement between Rashid and Meier dated Aug. 4, 1963, which Meier managed to save over the years. The agreement provides for Rashid to retain custody of the scrolls, and Meier the custody of the German translations produced by Rashid. The typewriter used therein has a slightly different typeface than that used in the Contact Reports or in Rashid's letter, as is best seen by comparing the J's. Of interest is that in this 1963 agreement Rashid's signature appears readily identifiable as coming from the same hand as in his 1974 letter, though differences in detail are also apparent. In particular, the latter signature is somewhat less well articulated than the earlier signature, as is to be expected due to the increased age of the signer.

A peculiar typing style. Auerbach also astutely observed (correspondence to me of 12 July, 1996) that in both the early Contact Reports and in Rashid's letter the typist consistently left no space after a comma or period, but ran the subsequent word into the punctuation. And in both, a space is left before a question mark, though this occurs only once in Rashid's letter. The lack of a space after punctuation occurs in Contact Reports prior to about mid-1976, but not afterwards. It was at about this time that Meier handed Semjase a newer typewriter he had purchased through the generosity of group member Olga Walder, and after he received it back from Semjase a month or so later, he was able to type Contact Reports on it considerably faster than before while in the trance state. The presumption is that the Pleiadians were able to tune their techno-telepathic communication system through Meier's brain to this typewriter to produce optimal one-handed typing efficiency for him. In Stevens's book ...Preliminary Investigation Report, he names some five witnesses to Meier's fast typing while in this trance state, and Stevens himself is a sixth (personal communication, Nov. 16, 1996). Stevens has also observed Meier type when in a normal, non-trance state, and has noted that he is then a slow, mistake-prone typist.

When Meier switched over to a different typewriter, a change in typing style may be noticedthe use of double line spacing, whereas single line spacing occurred previously. However, the space before a question mark remains in Meier's later Contact Reports.

Of key importance to keep in mind is that when typing in the trance state, Meier had no control over the movements of his right hand over the keyboard. Thus, if Meier is given the benefit of the doubt, the space before the question mark represents a bit of Semjase's programming with her automatic-typing telepathic-transmission device. Either she did not know any better, perhaps having noticed that style in Rashid's letter, or she believed that to be Meier's style, or she fed it in purposely to provide plausible deniability for skeptics who might otherwise be forced to accept the reality of Meier's contacts against their will. This latter kind of possibility is discussed further after the next main topic.

One needs to ask the question, how rare is this kind of typing style
omitting the space after a comma or period? I have noticed that it occurs also in the copy of a German letter reproduced by Stevens (Preliminary Investigation Report, pp. 177-179, 460-461) from one Elsa Schroder, a German national, who described therein her accidental encounter with Semjase and her "flying saucer" in an Iranian desert in 1975. She did not wish her identity to be exposed for fear of being branded "nutty," and so her later whereabouts has remained unknown. Her letter had been typed in Antioch, Turkey, a month after her close encounter, but was misrouted within the Turkish postal system and then forwarded by an alert recipient (S. Kramer) to DUIST (a weekly UFO newspaper) in Wiesbaden, Germany, where it became known to Mrs. Ilse Jacobi of DUIST. After she heard of the Meier contactee case she informed him about it, and Meier later informed Stevens, who then acquired a copy of it from DUIST. One university professor I have queried (Clara Ubieto, Department of German Philology, Univ. of Zaragoza, Spain) has informed me that she has had students who made the same mistake of crowding in the commas and periods, when required to use a typewriter for about the first time, though she finds this is much rarer nowadays when keyboards have become so familiar. Another German professor (Jost Hermand at the University of Wisconsin) stated that the style "was quite common for a while and is in no way peculiar." This was while he taught at several different universities in Germany years ago. German ufologist Michael Hesemann has independently informed me that he has seen the same style used in letters typed by persons of little schooling. And Meier group member B. Koye has informed me that "At that time (in the Sixties) I also remember, that it has been very normal and in useafter comma or points not to let space between!" So this peculiar style of typing was not so rare after all. Whether this had been Meier's typing style as well, before 1975, is unknown. It is not a typing style found in Meier's Foreword or After-word sections of the 1978 TJ.

In Schroder's letter a lack of typewriter skill is suggested by her having used but one long, two-page paragraph, and by her having typed too close to the bottom of one page, causing it to fail to scroll evenly. Rashid's letter exhibits better typewriting style, however, so it might represent an example supporting Prof. Hermand's opinion.

The typeface on the Schroder letter is again the same European or Swiss-German typeface as found in the 1975-77 Contact Reports and in Rashid's letter, suggesting that it or its brand of typewriter was a rather widely used one. If, however, it is instead inferred that Meier was guilty of typing these letters and of somehow routing the Schroder letter on its tortuous path, the skeptic should bear in mind that the general style of each of them is quite different. Rashid's letter had frequent paragraphs with indentations. The Contact Reports show paragraphs of variable length, depend­ing on how long each speaker spoke, without indentations except for spacing between the speaker's name and his/her text. And the Contact Reports Meier typed in the trance state exhibit double spacing between lines and greater spacing between different speakers, while the other two documents exhibit only single spacing. Also to be noted is that the handwriting of the signatures at the end, particularly the "E" in "Elsa" and the "E" in "Eduard," is totally different. Although these differences between the documents could have been faked in by an intelligent hoaxer, no such hoaxer would then be expected to make the more obvious mistake of reproducing the peculiar style of crowding the commas and periods.

Although the quality of the reproduced Schroder letter is poor, its typewriter-key characteristics can be seen not to resemble those of Meier's Contact Notes. Though there is some similarity between its typography and that of the Rashid letter (e.g., the "ä" and "ü" coming through weakly), a difference I have noticed is that in its letter combination of "ah", the "h" lies low relative to the "a" in the Schroder letter 11 out of 12 times, being about even once, and being of quality too poor to permit a judgment in the three other instances. In the Rashid letter-copy, on the other hand, within the combination "ah" the two letters appear to lie at the same height in all 6 out of 6 instances. All in all, the Rashid and Schroder letters of 1974 and 1975 appear to have been typed on different typewriters distinct from Meier's Contact Reports.

Why would Meier's ETs flatter him? Moving further into Auerbach's report, we find its mention that in the Contact Reports Semjase makes a point of bestowing lavish praise upon Meier at times. By omitting the fact that Meier just as frequently objected to this praise, which remarks were also faithfully reproduced in the Contact Reports, Auerbach was implying that Meier had inserted this within invented conversations to make himself look good. This is not to say that Meier does not indeed deserve much praise for having agreed to be the Pleiadians' primary contacteeone who would speak outand for enduring the resultant abuse from ufologists which has occurred ever since.

Extraterrestrial strategy. Also omitted in the report was any discussion of a very plausible reason why Meier's contactors would have spoken to him at times in excessively flattering terms: in order that their contacts not force unreceptive people to believe what their belief systems cannot tolerate; namely, that ETs or aliens further evolved than we exist in our vicinity, are aware of us and have been interacting with selected persons. That is, aliens purposely include speech, actions and items in their contacts that can be used by skeptics to discredit the contactee and/or partially undermine the supportive evidence he may have been allowed to accumulate concerning the alien presence. If the positive evidence supporting the reality of the contacts is ignored, the disinformation or deception fed in by alien contactors can then give critics with an anthropocentric mindset an excuse to maintain their existing beliefs without "going crazy." Although this would mean that the Pleiadians, being the ETs in consideration, are more intelligent than their skeptical human detractors and can stay several jumps ahead of them, this kind of strategy should not be so surprising if they are thousands or tens of thousands (or millions) of years more evolved than we, are ethical enough not to force any sudden mental chaos upon society, and are a bit smarter than we. However, this thought seems to be a giant stumbling block for negative skepticsthat UFO aliens would be smarter, more sophisticated and more ethical than we arein seeing that their actions do not cause the mental health of negative skeptics to be shattered while at the same time putting across some information for those who can mentally accept it. The ethic of allowing skeptics a way to maintain a free-will choice of deniability appears to be a higher one than the ethic of never telling a lie or never being deceptive to a contactee, when the disinformation is presented within a likely context of requiring us to "sift out the wheat from the chaff."

At various points within the Contact Reports, Semjase does come right out and tell Meier that they regard the individual's free will as paramount, and also that the worst result that they must not allow to happen is for their contacts with him to be turned into another religion or cult, with either them being considered gods and goddesses or Meier becoming a world renowned guru. (A person can be said to be subject to a cult, or to an unnecessary loyalty, when he unquestioningly accepts what the cult leader or guru says as truth. If a person has to question the veracity of each statement made by a source, that person obviously is not under the cultic influence of that source.) By feeding in some semi-obvious disinformation to what they told Meier, which would be incorporated into his Contact Reports and later seen by detractors as egoism or dumb invented remarks on the part of the contactee, the Pleiadians, and other ETs similarly, would be fulfilling all these objectives. The Pleiadians' causing a tree to disappear about which Semjase's beamship had very closely hovered and been photographed by Meier (e.g., see UFO...Contact from the Pleiades, Vol. II, pp. 64-66) can be considered a similar form of deception, which allows unknowledgeable skeptics a way out of their dilemma: to accuse Meier of having used a model tree as well as a model UFO.

Neither Auerbach nor Korff mentions this kind of explanation involving ET strategy, though it seems evident enough in retrospect. Do detractors like Korff really think that aliens who can efficiently travel "from there to here," and make their UFO craft perform wondrous maneuvers we can only gasp at, wouldn't also be smarter, more knowledgeable, more experienced and more clever than we ourselves after studying us for many years? An ethic of providing negative skeptics with deceptive information so that they will not be forced to accept a new paradigm against their will also is consistent with the occurrence of hundreds of thousands of UFO sightings worldwide in the past half century without the ETs involved ever once hanging around so long that their presence would become confirmed beyond any doubt.

The strategy does seem to indicate high levels of intelligence and ethics on the part of the aliens, along with a propensity for using their advanced technology and evolved capabilities as necessary to implement it. It seems to be a well thought out, fail-safe strategy in that negative skeptics whose belief systems cannot tolerate the alien presence and degree of advancement over us will eagerly pounce upon the pieces of deception provided by the ETs as items with which to debunk the contactee, thereby maintaining their free will. At the same time, they will not be able to accept the present explanation, no matter how well set forth, and will think of it as mere ration­al­ization. If and when they shed their anthropocentric beliefs and see through the alien strategy, however, then that strategy will have become superfluous, which would seem to be the ultimate goal of the strategy.

Have any others seen Semjase? The same report of Auerbach (Korff p. 82) then interjects the sentence: "No one, incidentally, including his wife and children, has ever seen Semjase." However, besides Meier, we have already mentioned an exception to thisthe woman, Elsa Schroder (reported in Stevens's Preliminary Investigation Report, pp. 177-179). But besides this omission, consider the erroneous impression Korff's statement leaves by failure to mention that on one occasion four adults besides Meier's wife and children had a daytime sighting of Semjase's beamship. His wife's testimony to this is preserved on video tape, along with the picture that one of his children drew of the beamship craft.

Until about the time that Meier's wife, Kalliope, had her sighting, she had been upset and confused or disbelieving about it all. But afterwards she told the Elders this (see UFO... Contact from the Pleiades, Vol. II, by Lee and Brit Elders, Genesis III Publishing, p. 45, as translated into English):

"In June of 1976, seven people were waiting with me for Billy to come back from a contact. He came and said to us 'go with me to another point.' We went and waited. It was daylight and one of the boys told us to look up into the sky. It was our first sighting in the day. The ship was very big but got smaller as it rose, and I clearly saw the detail around the top of the ship. I saw little ports, and the whole UFO seemed to be light. The children, three other women and one man saw it, too. There are many lights going across the sky at night and I cannot be sure what they are, but this I am sure was the ship of Semjase. I didn't believe it because I had never talked about UFO's or seen one. But after this day...I believe.

"Now the UFO's are secondary, the information from the Pleiadians come first. We have to learn to live together...man and woman, different countries, different races and different worlds."

This information, captured on video tape by the Elders, has been available since 1983. For Korff to omit it from his book represents unconscionable reporting. Being a daytime witness to a UFO that Meier had previously been informed by Semjase she would expose to them is certainly relevant information as to the existence of the UFO's pilot (Semjase). Although Korff lists names of 21 witnesses who saw UFOs related to Meier's contacts (Korff, p. 307), and Kalliope is included, he falsely implies (p. 306) that these were all just nighttime observations "of blobs of light." Kalliope has since divorced Eduard Meier, an ordeal not infrequently suffered by a contactee or abductee. But this can indicate that she has a mind of her own and would not likely have made up the story of her sighting at her husband's request.

Alien contact strategy. The same portion of Auerbach's summary goes on to say (Korff, p. 82), "The manuscript [Meier's Contact Notes] makes it abundantly clear that she [Semjase] wishes to confine her contacts strictly to Mr. Meier alone. Certainly a convenient wish." Again, the report omitted other relevant material within the Contact Reports in which Semjase explained to Meier why they had to maintain this policy, since Meier quizzed her about it several times and asked permission to bring one or two others along on more than one occasion. Her explanation for this involved their need to avoid making their contacts so well attested that many people would abruptly be forced to believe in their existence before they were mentally and psychologically prepared to do so. Failure to provide this rather evident explanation along with the facts of alien contact can create a very misleading picture. And again, the report's use of "convenient" here implies through innuendo that it was convenient for a hoaxer to have invented the contact-­confinement theme, while ignoring the likelihood that it was part of the ETs' strategy.

Pseudo-science. The summary report continues with the mention of various statements Meier was told by Semjase, and which therefore appear in his verbatim Contact Reports, that sound like silly science or pseudo-science, at least to most scientists. Apparently, Auerbach and Korff as well believe that what ETs tell or show their contactees/abductees has to be truth and nothing but the truth! That is quite an assumption for an investigator or ufologist to make, and as has just been pointed out, seems totally unjustified.

If the ET strategy already outlined here is at all correct, the ETs would need to take special care that scientists as a whole do not catch on to the reality of the alien presence before they and the rest of the populace are psychologically prepared for it. This is because the consensual scientific view of matters dictates whether or not the news media and government bodies will accept an event as real news or as a topic deserving of being ignored or ridiculed. Thus the ETs involved need only supply their contactees and abductees with a certain fraction of pseudo-scientific nonsense, which their recipients will likely accept as true, in order that mainstream science remain oblivious to the reality of the situation. For more on this, see my paper "Possible Extraterrestrial Strategy for Earth" in the Quart. J. Royal Astronomical Soc., 27, pp. 94-101 (1986).

An ET strategy of including some disinformation is an obvious alternative to the possibility that it is the contactee, or abductee, who is not always telling the truth. Yet neither Korff nor Auerbach seems to have considered it.

However, it is not always possible for us to say with any certainty which statements from ETs are disinformation, and which are not but only seem so because of our highly limited scientific understanding, which frequently needs revision as science progresses. Think of how many ways our science has been updated in the past century, then try to imagine how many important further updates and totally new revisions and additions will have occurred by 50 centuries from now, assuming our civilization survives. Some ETs could be millions of years ahead of us in evolution, since other stars possessing planets formed up to a billion years ahead of our solar system.

Meier's time-travel adventures. Korff then quotes Auerbach's report as saying that Meier "had had himself transported back in time to Jerusalem" (Korff, p. 83). This is in need of immediate correction: Meier did not order or request the trip; rather, it was bestowed upon him by his ET contactor at the time (1956), namely Asket, as a part of his ET schooling that he accepted. Thanks to a few respected scientists in the past decade having concluded that time travel may not be inconceivable after all, its possibility must now be taken seriously by UFO investigators and critics alike. See Science, Vol. 274 (11 Oct., 1996), p. 202, for a recent example. On the particular time-travel trip in question, Meier, along with one other, was said to have been taken close to Jerusalem, near Bethphage and the Mount of Olives, to meet Jmmanuel and some of his disciples in the year A.D. 32. This evidently relates to an occasion prior to the scene in Matthew 21:1 and TJ 22:1.

Did Jmmanuel praise Meier? The report then states, "The Lord listens patiently to a great deal of religious philosophy on the part of Mr. Meier, and duly admires his high intelligence." Here, to start with, it is misleading to have called Jmmanuel "the Lord," as both at this point and in the TJ he made it clear through prophetic insight that he was not what he would come to be known by with the Christian title of "Lord," i.e., a divine person, or son of God or God.

It is further misleading for Auerbach to have implied that Meier did most of the talking while Jmmanuel mostly listened. During this past-time encounter with Jmmanuel, Meier spoke 91 sentences, including many questions directed to Jmmanuel, while Jmmanuel spoke 253 sentences. This is the opposite of what Auerbach implied.

Out of these 253 sentences, few relate to Meier's intelligence. One did speak of Meier as "wise" or "fast-thinking," and this was in response to Meier's recognition and commendation of Jmmanuel's precognitive abilities. In one other sentence Jmmanuel told Meier he was very educated in spirit, which is not the same, however, as mental intelligence. In another Jmmanuel told Meier that he was more discerning than he had expected, which, however, refers only to an unknown expectation. At one point he told Meier that Meier properly caught his meaning, though this is canceled by his telling Meier at another point that Meier had not interpreted him right. And once he was surprised that Meier could conceive qualitatively of how it was possible for him (Jmmanuel) to prophesy far into the future. At most, this represents only two or three sentences of "high intelligence" praise, which, however, do not seem undeserved, out of the 253, and so does not begin to justify the prominence the report assigned to it. A less biased report would have discussed some of the substance of the conversations. This actual substance included discussions of how the religion (or philosophy) Jmmanuel initiated soon went sadly astray from his actual teachings, and discussion of the degree of development of Meier's spirit relative to Jmmanuel's, a topic Meier was naturally interested in.

Meier's editing errors. Finally, what Korff presents from Auerbach's summary report speaks of Meier's frequent use of characteristic mistakes in the German language. This was meant to imply that the same mistakes occur in both the German TJ and the Contact Reports and/or Rashid's letter, with Meier supposedly having hoaxed them all. Now, as noted before, the appearance of Meier's personal style should not be unexpected within the Contact Reports, since they are his own reproduction, through a rapid form of technologically channeled "automatic writing" from the Pleiadians, of his own conversations with them he had held the previous night or so during a contact. They were all expressed through his own thoughts, and were thus expressed in his own Swiss-German tongue. And they are not unexpected within the TJ, since Meier edited it.

Concerning Rashid, we cannot expect that his knowledge of German, being a second or third language for him, would be independent of what German he learned from Meier. He conversed with Meier frequently in 1963. Thus in all probability Rashid learned some Swiss-German from Meier. A few pieces of this style learned from Meier might then be expected to have appeared in his letters to him, and also in his translation of the TJ, since he of course knew that Meier was its custodian. As anyone knows, parts of a foreign language learned from someone with whom you speak and whom you respect will stick with you better than what you learn from a textbook or in class.

Three examples of these improprieties in language are mentioned by Korff from Auerbach's report, the first being Meier's use of "yet however," which refers to "doch aber" in the German and does not represent good German grammar. This was a perceptive observation by Auerbach. I have found this used five times in the TJ, which occurs in its verses that are distinctive from Matthean verses, and once in Rashid's letter. Assuming it is indeed an expression also used by Meier, this could be a prime example of an expression Rashid picked up from Meier and continued to use at times when expressing his thoughts in the German language intended for Meier to read. On the other hand, one cannot be sure that Meier himself did not, in giving the 1978 TJ its initial editing, try to improve upon Rashid's translation and, in so doing, insert "doch" before "aber" in some or all of these instances. Auerbach was apparently not open to either of these two possibilities, as they seem not to have occurred to him.

The second example is Meier's not infrequent use of the German word "so" to mean "so that." This observation by Auerbach also seems correct, assuming the improper use of "so" did not stem from Rashid himself during translations. Again, however, it says nothing against the general validity of the TJ.

The third example given is that "Olives" is said to have been written as "Oilives," regarding the Mount of Olives. However, in the 1978 German TJ it is spelled correctly (Ölberg) in both of its two occurrences, so Auerbach may have been referring to a particular Contact Report in German that I do not possess. If in there it had been spelled as "Oelberg," Auerbach may have referred to this as "Oilives" in his English-language report. The "Oel" spelling would have been used in Meier's Contact Reports because the typewriter he utilized then did not support capitalized vowels with umlauts. Thus "Öl" would have been typed out as "Oel." Interestingly, this latter error did creep into one occurrence in the 1992 and 1996 TJs (TJ 25:6), allowing us to understand it was a simple mistake that bears no connection to the genuineness of the TJ.

Auerbach's report then mentions that "logical" and "forms of life" are favorite expressions of Meier (Korff, p. 83). Although the point of this is not given in Korff's book, it is clear from Auerbach's letter to me of March 31, 1989, he was concluding that the occurrence of "logic" (some 20 times) within the TJ as opposed to its non-occurrence within the Gospels means that Meier placed it within the TJ. Again, however, Auerbach was just stating a conclusion that derives from already having assumed the TJ to be a hoax, rather than examining the likelihood that a word meaning "logic" occurred frequently within the original TJ and was then removed by the early 2nd-century Christian scribe-editor as he compiled the Gospel of Matthew.

One needs to ask a question not asked by Auerbach or Korff: If Jmmanuel had taught basic truths, or even learned some from the Pleiadians, is it not likely this would have involved mention of logic? Although logic per se seems to have been of little or no concern within Judaic literature of that era, it was a well developed concept within Greek literature, and even many "mainstream" New Testament scholars assume that Jesus must have known Greek. The TJ itself indicates that Jmmanuel had knowledge of at least one Greek saying, which derives from Plato in the 4th century B.C.the saying, "Man is the measure of all things," within an extended prophecy about people of the future:

"Thus they will also lose sight of the principle of the oldest wisdom, which says that humans are the measure of all things in life, because they are after all a part of the Creation." (TJ 36:25)

Thus it is only consistent that Jmmanuel urged the use of logic within the TJ.

One also needs to ask, Would the writer of Matthew have had reason to omit the word "logic" or sentences that express the concept, when editing the TJ and forming his gospel from it? The answer to this question is also affirmative. Consistent with other alterations that the compiler of Matthew is deduced to have made to the TJ, he is seen to have omitted TJ teachings that encourage the reader or listener to think for himself. This was apparently because followers of the new religion were supposed to obey the teachings of the church and its priests and scribes rather than to think independently. And if one uses logic, one is thinking independently for oneself.

An additional reason for the writer of Matthew's omission of "logic" is that as a concept more in use in gentile lands, e.g., in Greece, than in the land of Israel, and with the compiler of Matthew being anti-gentile in his outlook (as may be seen from some 8 or 10 verses of Matthew), "logic" would not likely have appealed to him. Six of the 20 usages of "logic" occur in TJ text presenting teachings of Jmmanuel occurring well after his survival of the crucifixion, and so could not have been utilized by the compiler of Matthew for that reason alone.

As to a preference by Meier for the phrase "forms of life," this has little connection to the TJ, as it appears there only once ("Lebensformen"). One needs to keep the TJ context in mindof Jmmanuel himself being a contactee, having received 40 days and nights of tutoring under the same general ET group (Pleiadians) as those who contacted Meier, and who, having an ET biological father and being aware of that fact, consequently spoke frequently in terms of this "human race" and of Creation being the maker of the universes and of all living things. No doubt the phrase occurs more frequently within the Contact Reports, where the subject must have arisen several times in conjunction with Meier's numerous questions to Semjase and in her replies, on all kinds of topics.

In his letter to me of March 11, 1988, Auerbach also pointed out that in Rashid's letter, his clause "Es ist mir leid" ("I am sorry") represents a mistake in grammar also present in Meier's Contact Reports, thus trying to imply that Meier had hoaxed the letter by Rashid. The preferred expression is "Es tut mir leid." However, this just as easily represents another idiosyncrasy Rashid picked up from Meier in 1963. On the other hand, the expression may not be so idiosyncratic after all, as the use of "es ist leid" instead of "tut mir leid" is okayed in the Cassell's 1978 German-English dictionary (see under "leid").

Other criticisms by Auerbach similarly seem based simply on the fact that much of the TJ's content is different from what is in the Bible. This also likely contributed to his initial bias that the TJ could not possibly be genuine. This is despite the fact that he found the TJ "to be a persua­sive document" (in correspondence to me of March 31, 1989), and found its "Epilogue and Explanation" page to be "particularly interesting" (in correspondence of Sept. 29, 1988). In summary, although the errors and false conclusions in this section are those of Auerbach, Korff perpetuated them without applying any critical analysis of his own and without looking into the TJ for himself.

Opinions of Michael Arends. Korff (p. 83) then mentions a so-called analysis by Michael Arends, a German ufologist, in which "similarities were noted between the typewriter used by Billy Meier to transcribe his 'contact' notes with Semjase and the 'Rashid' translations Meier claimed to have received from Baghdad. Arends identified specific letter characters which he found indicative that the same typewriter had been used." This claim that the same typewriter was used for both writings has already been discussed above and shown to be totally false.

As an aid to answering this kind of question, it would have been very helpful if Meier had retained the rough TJ translations he received from Rashid. However, after overseeing the editing of the TJ manuscript and readying it for publication in 1977-78, Meier unfortunately did not retain them. From his viewpoint there was no need to, storage space being at a premium, since he knew as a personal fact that the TJ he co-discovered was genuine, and that if his many hundreds of photographs of Pleiadian beamships did not convince a person of the reality of his experiences, additional less direct evidence would not be convincing to that person either. And despite repeated attempts, he was never able to receive back from the typist the manuscript which he had sent her (Frau Krauer) to ready it for print.

Korff goes on to state that Arends "discovered that entire passages had been embellished on and lifted from a standard Lutheran version of the Bible." This again goes over some of the same ground already covered. What Korff failed to say here in this unproven claim is that any priest or ex-priest who is well acquainted with the Gospels would find that, in translating those passages of the TJ that had been most faithfully carried over into the Gospel of Matthew, his translation would naturally end up sounding very much like what is in that gospel. The following question would then arise for him: Should he translate those sections into the words and language as he remembers them from his upbringing and training, or should he not use one particular, standard Bible as his guide, and use its language consistently for those parallel passages? The latter is an evident choice, in which case the Bible he used would have been the well known and prevailingly used German Bible (which is the Martin Luther Bible), since his translation from the Aramaic was into German. The only other alternative would be to try to cast his translation into a form that would seem fresh and never before used, such as referring to the Mount of Olives as the "Hill of Olives" or "Hill of Oval Drupes," as an extreme example of the problem that would be encountered. So Rashid evidently had the German Bible on hand and used its particular German phraseology and vocabulary in familiar passages.

From the point of view not considered by Auerbach, Arends and Korffthat the TJ could be authenticone finds that it was the compiler of Matthew who made many insertions, omissions and substitutions when utilizing the TJ as his source. And one finds a very consistent picture of the theological slant of this compiler from this viewpoint, as well as fresh and consistent solutions to the problems of Gospel priorities and interpretations of the few, terse, ambiguous sayings about the formation of the Gospels that have survived from certain early church fathers but continue to puzzle mainstream biblical scholarship. These alterations incorporated into Matthew then are what Arends refers to as "embellishments" from his standpoint of assuming Meier guilty of fraud. Thus Arends and Korff are guilty of failing even to consider the likelihood that it was the compiler of Matthew who made massive editorial alterations in rendering his source document, the TJ, into a form acceptable to the early church, namely, into the Gospel of Matthew. The interested reader may need to consult my book, The Problems of New Testament Gospel Origins, or consult this file, to learn how strong the evidence is that Matthew (not Mark) was the first Gospel written, and in Hebrew or Aramaic, with Mark being second (though being the first Gospel in Greek) and Luke third, just as attested by the early church fathers: Irenaeus, Origen and Augustine, and implied by the 2nd-century bishop Papias, who was the first person on record to mention any of the Gospels by name.

Underground Video and Aramaisms. On p. 83 of his book Korff also mentions a verbal attack against Meier by Underground Video (UV) of Beverly Hills, California. Their charges seem to be of the same nature as Korff'squite unsubstantiated, with few details being presented. However, in a footnote referring to a conversation with UV's president, Korff does mention one particular charge: that UV had "discovered evidence proving that the Talmud Immanuel does not contain Aramaic!" One scarcely knows what to make of this charge. Does it mean that UV or Korff thinks that after a document is translated from Aramaic into German the translation should contain Aramaic writing?

To interpret this charge in the most intelligent light, it may be that UV was claiming that the German TJ does not show any awkward language indicative of having been translated too literally from the Aramaic in places. Such indications, if present in the translated text, are called Aramaisms or Semitisms, whose meaning Korff may not have understood. However, in the 1978 German TJ there are some Aramaisms that are sufficiently evident that even a non-scholar of Aramaic, such as myself, can identify them (with the help of some textbooks).

One set of such Aramaisms involves sentences of the type where "and he spoke" or similar words occur, seemingly redundantly, just following another verb having nearly the same meaning, such as "answered." It is an indication that the original text contained no quotation marks, as punctuation was not invented until a few centuries later. Thus, "and he spoke" served to notify the reader or listener that a quotation was commencing. One would search for these indications primarily in those portions of the TJ not having Matthean parallels, since the same redundancies persisted also into the German Bible, which stems from texts (Greek and Latin) also old enough not to have contained punctuation. An example occurs at TJ 28:41, which has no parallel within Matthew for reasons that should become obvious. A literal translation of its German, with the redundant phrase italicized, reads,

"But Jmmanuel answered and spoke: 'Truly I say to you: You may succeed for a long time in accusing Judas Iscariot of betrayal in front of the people, but the truth will come out and be known by all in the whole world.'"

Notice the two verbs "answered" and "spoke." The actual English translation by Wild Flower Press omits the redundant "and spoke," which indicates how easily such an Aramaism can innocently be lost during translation. Fortunately, however, neither Rashid nor Meier nor his editorial assistant removed this and some other redundancies from their German text. (Is Meier, with no formal schooling past the elementary levels, supposed to have known about this and hoaxed in such an indication of an underlying ancient text?)

Another such instance occurs at TJ 29:27 in the 1992 German version, which is TJ 29:33 in the 1978 version. Two more occur at TJ 31:12,13, respectively, which read, literally:

"But Mary asked and spoke, 'Yet he was dead and lay here dead, how can he rise?' But the guardian angel answered and spoke, 'Why are you seeking someone alive among the dead?'"

Another instance occurs at TJ 31:52, and another at TJ 33:23 (1992 version; in TJ 33:21, 1978 version). Still another occurs at TJ 23:33. Two more occur at TJ 29:45,46 (1992 version; in TJ 29:50,51 in the 1978 version). With a literal translation these latter two read:

"Slowly the screaming stopped, and a third time the governor asked and spoke: 'Which one of these two shall I release?' The people cried out and spoke, 'Free Barabbas!'"

Two more instances occur in the subsequent two TJ verses, and another at TJ 30:6. Still another occurs at TJ 31:51. These are 13 instances that have been pointed out here; there may well be more. They indicate translation from an ancient text.

Another indication that the original had been an ancient text is that nowhere in the TJ's German text is there a list of three nouns or adjectives in a row separated by two commas and an "and" (und), as in our typical "A, B, and C" structure. This is indicative of the original text having used the "A and B and C" structure, which the German text often faithfully rendered. There are many instances of this more labored structure in the German TJ text: "A und B und C," which then reflects the same structure used in the ancient text, which of course did not, until centuries later, possess or utilize commas. On the other hand, Meier in his own German writing does use this structure (e.g., see p. xx, lines 3 & 4, of the "Vorwort" of the TJ.

A more distinctive type of Aramaism occurs in TJ 3:31, in the passage:

"When Jmmanuel had been baptized, he soon came out of the water of the Jordan, and behold, a metallic light dropped from the sky and descended steeply over the Jordan. Consequently they all fell on their faces and pressed them into the sand while a voice from the metallic light spoke, 'This is my beloved son...'"

The expression "fell on their faces" in the original Aramaic means to bow down to, or cower before, some exalted person or object. In this case the expression can be taken more literally than usual, because of the fear that a close-up UFO encounter instills in awed witnesses.

A still different type of Aramaism occurs in the Sermon on the Mount at TJ 5:30, a verse not in Matthew. The verse, with a literal translation of the portion exhibiting the Aramaism, reads:

"If a thought causes you annoyance, eradicate it and ban it from your brain. It is better to destroy a thought that incites annoyance and not to bring the whole world of thought into an uproar."

The Aramaism here is "and not." If Rashid had been concerned to render this into better German, he would have used the common German word "als" here, which means "than," instead of "and not." And indeed, in the English translation by Wild Flower Press "than" is used, thus removing the Aramaism. It turns out that the Aramaic language lacked the ability to express this comparative sense in the manner we are used to (see M. Black, An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts, p. 117), not having the direct equivalent to "than," and so other language was used to put across the intended thought. More on this is given in the section on the TJ's genuineness.

These examples show some of the Aramaisms and evidence of ancient origins exhibited by the German TJ. They demonstrate in as conclusive a manner as is possible from indirect evidence that the TJ is no hoax. Korff's contention to the contrary (p. 84) is seen to lack any substance.